Heer Gebirgsjäger M34 Overseas Cap

Product Description: This Heer Gebirgsjäger M34 Overseas Cap is an outstanding and all-original piece. It has very attractive character, with clear traces of honest period wear. The cap is made out of a textbook German Army field gray wool fabric. Even wear has exposed much of the weave. The stitching shows matching wear, with some typical sun fading as well. The front of the cap is complete with a lovely set of insignia. The eagle and cockade are both wartime, 1940 pattern, with field gray backings. They are both Bev machine woven, and both are period hand sewn to the cap. The green soutache is correctly punched through the front of the cap and machine sewn, and indicates issue to a Gebirgsjäger (mountain troop) or Jäger (light infantry) unit. The soutache ates this cap to the period before June 1942. One of the two metal ventilation eyelets near the top edge of the cap is missing. This cap is lined with a textbook cotton fabric that shows wear. There is a neatly hand sewn repair to a small wear hole. The factory markings have been worn away. This Heer Gebirgsjäger M34 cap has a lovely, “been there,” field worn look. The condition rates as excellent.

Historical Description: The “side cap” was a part of the uniform worn by nearly all military, paramilitary, political and civil organizations in the Third Reich. It was a narrow hat that could be folded flat and tucked into a belt or haversack. This was, at the time, a very stylish type of uniform cap; in the German Army, it replaced the round “pork pie” style of field cap used in the Great War. The German name for this cap, in most organizations, was “Feldmütze”- field cap. Despite the name, it was often worn as a daily service cap by postal workers and other personnel who would never be deployed to the field.  The men and women who wore the side cap gave it the nickname “Schiffchen,” meaning little boat, due to its shape. The side caps were made in the same type of fabric as the uniforms, in the uniform color particular to each organization. The side caps were adorned with branch-specific insignia, usually bearing some form of the German eagle and swastika national emblem. Many side caps also bore red, white, and black national cockades. The insignia were usually embroidered or woven, but metal devices were used on some caps as well. Officer caps generally were distinguished by silver braid along the top edge and/or on the upper part of the flap at the front of the cap and were often custom tailored from fine fabrics. The German military, and many other organizations, had broadly replaced the side cap with a new, more practical cap featuring a brim, by 1943. But the side cap continued to be worn by some troops until the end of the war.

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